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People still read blogs. Well, maybe a few of them. I was happy to see others get intrigued and interested in my sharing of the ways Descript had really revolutionized my way of creating podcast audio.
More than likes and reposts there’s not much more positive effect when you can capture Jon Udell’s interest as it happened in Mastodon and as he shared (aka blogged) about an IT Conversations episode he re-published.
And as it often happens, Jon’s example showed me a portion of a software that I was unaware of. This was as I remember one of the most evident aspects I found in the 1990s when I started using this software called PhotoShop- each little bit I learned made me realize how little of it’s total potential I did not know, like it was infinite software.
You see, I made use of Descript to much more efficiently edit my OEG Voices podcasts – but my flow was exporting audio and posting to my WordPress powered site. Jon’s post pointed to an interesting aspect when audio was published to a Descript.com sharable link.
Start with my most recent episode, published to our site, with audio embedded, a link to the transcript Descript creates.
If you access the episode via the shared link to Descript, when you click the play button in the lower left, the transcript highlights each word, in a kind of read along fashion. That’s nifty, because you might want to stop to perhaps copy a sentence, or look something up.
Even more interestingly, you can highlight a portion of text, use a contextual menu, and provide a direct link to that portion of audio. Woah. Try this link to hear/read Sarah’s intro from the screenshot above.
Yes, Descript provides addressable links to portions of audio (note, I have found that Descript is not jumping down to the location, maybe that’s my set up, I did post a request in their Discord bug report).
But wait there’s more. You can also add comments (perhaps annotation style) to portions of he transcript/audio.
You do have to create an account to comment, so you might not appreciate that. It looks like it’s more aimed at comments for production notes, but why cannot it be more annotation like?
Anyhow, this was nifty to discover, and I would not have known this, had not Jon shared his own efforts with a link.
This is how the web works, well my web works this way. And refreshing to explore some technology and not with the din of AI doomsday or salvation day reverb (although there is a use of AI for Descript in transcription, but it’s at a functional use level, not a shove it your face level).
I am confident as always there is more here that I do not know with Descript than what I do know (I need learn the Over Dub tool).
Featured Image: There’s always that one thing…
As it happens while looking for one thing (now forgotten) in my piles of web stuff, I stumbled across a directory of audio conversations I recorded in 2007. Just sitting there in a web directory.
It reminded me of one of the classic early Web2.0 Storytelling stuff I used to trade with Bryan Alexander— I Found A Digital Camera in the Woods (original forum post is gone, a copy is available).
I found a reference to this in a blog post written before a 2007 circum-Australia tour– I think it was material I hoped to use in presentations, but I am actually not too sure what I asked folks.
Here they are as a playlist:
Great to find these voices of colleagues from the past– now what the heck was I using it for?
Oh well, found audio is fun.
Featured Image:
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